Monkey terror

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/20/watch-monkey-wreaks-havoc_n_120120.html

Prisons

So, you're going to prison. First, protective hookups. Actually, pre-first, there's a book called "You Are Going to Prison." You can buy it here. It's got a sort-of happy cover, given the subject matter. Back to "YAGtP" in a bit.

PROTECTIVE HOOKUPS
From "Hooking Up: Protective Pairing for Punks,” a pamphlet for male prisoners available by mail, online, and at some prison libraries. The pamphlet was written by Stephen Donaldson, a former convict who served a four-year term at a series of prisons for assault with intent to commit murder; he later served an additional term for violating his parole. Donaldson is now president of Stop Prisoner Rape, an advocacy group based in New York City. [Description cribbed from Harper's magazine. Let's assume I've given them full credit for what they re-printed, seeing as Donaldson was the guy who wrote it, and he deserved better than a bunch of liberals like me making fun, if only slightly and respectfully of it, because let's face it, they printed it because it's funny in an awful way, just like I am.]

Many prisoners who have been raped by fellow inmates or who have been threatened with rape decide to become “hooked up” with another prisoner. However distasteful the idea may seem [note to my gay friends: the going to prison crowd likes to pretend none of them wants to have gay sex], they believe it to be the least damaging way to survive in custody.

In most arrangements, the junior—in prison slang, the “catcher” or “punk”—gives up his independence and his control over his body to a senior partner—the “jocker,” “man,” pitcher,” or “daddy”—in exchange for protection from violence and sexual assaults by other prisoners. This arrangement, it must be said, is never totally voluntary for the punk, but it is preferable to a series of violent gang rapes and, in the age of AIDS, far safer.

If you want to be able to choose your daddy, tell the other prisoners that you want to hook up. The word will get around fast, and guys will start to talk to you about it. This has to be done quickly, otherwise events will overwhelm you and you may get gang-raped or forced to hook up before you can make a choice.

Spend as much time as you can with the jockers who want to hook up with you; ask them lots of questions and judge for yourslf how sincere they are. Ask other prisoners (especially punks and queens) about their reps. The more information you can get, the better your choice will be. Once you make your decision, you are pretty much stuck with it.

Check out how serious the guy is. Discuss what he expects from you in detail and try to work out the most favorable agreement. Even put it in writing! [Note: this was not covered in Contracts. Perhaps we will go over it in Advanced Contracts this fall? UPDATE: Is it more likely to be covered by "Sales" or "Leases"?] Protective pairing is a very serious matter for him, too, since it obligates him to put his life on the line to keep you from harm. Ask him about any previous catchers he’s had, how they managed together, and why they split. If any of them are still around, talk with them.

Ask jockers how they treat their women, because most jockers treat their punks the same way. If they form real partnerships with their women, they are more likely to do the same with you.

Jockers may well insist on having sex with you before putting a claim on you. This is not an unreasonable demand, since sex is such an important part of the deal. You can tell a lot about a jock by how he behaves with yu sexually. If he shows affection, such as stroking your body or hair, it is a good indication that he wants to treat you like a human being.

As soon as it becomes known that you are hooked up (and the news will spread like wildfire) everyone else will stop hassling you and will deal with you only through your “man.” Hooking up means you have definitely become a punk and will be considered a punk for as long as you stay in the joint, so if you decide to hook up, you might as well get used to that status.

Once the two of you decide to be hooked up, you may be given duties other than sex: for example, doing his laundry, cleaning his cell, making up his bunk, fixing coffeee for him, and giving him backrubs. Although the arrangement is firm—the “pitcher” makes the rules and the “catcher” follows them—the relationship will usually allow you some room to maneuver and have your wishes considered (as long as you respect the basic rules). While a jocker will never tolerate open rebellion, he usually seeks to get along with his punk, and to avoid an atmosphere of constant tension. He would rather relax around his punk, and over time he can and often does develop genuine affection for him. This allows a considerable degree of give-and-take in the nonsexual aspects of the partnership.

Some of the jocks who at first play the gorilla games and act extremely tough, callous, and coldhearted will calm down once they learn to trust you. They may even show an entirely different and unexpected side of themselves, sharing their own anxieties, fears, and deepest feelings. In turn, they will listen to you as you learn to trust them and talk about your own feelings. Thus you stand a good chance of developing a humane relationship in which each of you really cares about the other and works to keep the relationship smooth.

Human beings are remarkably adaptable creatures. It is true that if you become a punk and are locked up for a long time, you will get somewhat used to the punk role. This varies a lot from one punk to another. Some still hate every sex act after a decade of doing it every day. Others focus on the other aspects of the relationship and find some value there. Some treasure the security it brings. Many punks who have good relationships actually become fond of their jockers. It is not so uncommon, in the unusual conditions of confinement, for two straight guys to fall in love with each other over time. Psychologists generally consider adaptation to be a healthy reaction to a situation that you cannot change, so don’t worry about it if you find yourself adapting to the role. [Note: psychologists have said far crazier shit about homosexuality than this.] Once you are out, you can reverse the process and work on reclaiming the full expression of your masculine identity. [Note: It also occurs to me at this point that this article reverses the gay equation... homosexuality as lifestyle necessity, but not a choice or preference.]

Unfortunately, many, (if not most) jockers will try to get their punks to be as feminine in appearance and behavior as possible, because they are more comfortable pretending that they are relating sexually to some kind of female than to another male. But they also know that you are a punk, not a queen, and that such things don’t come naturally to you. You should ask about such things before accepting a claim, and make it clear that retaining your masculine identity is important to you. Some jockers don’t care. I was hooked up once with a guy who let me grow a mustache! Most will still refer to you as “him” and use your male name. Others may insist that you shave your legs, grow long hair, and use a feminine nickname. No matter what you have to do, remember that it is all an act and that you can go back to your normal behavior as soon as you get out.

That’s a lot of advice, but you’ll need it. Good luck finding a decent man, and remember you will leave it all behind (except for a much better understanding of men—and of women!) when you walk out the front gate.

PRISON WINE
Most people who know me know that I'm a bit of a snob, and generally wouldn't drink Pabst Blue Ribbon even if it was given to me for free. That having been said, I have other options. If I were in prison, however, I would not. And thus "prison wine." Prison wine is exactly what you might think it is, except grosser to make but slightly less gross to drink (!).
From "You Are Going to Prison":

"Prison hooch can be made in your cell toilet (as long as you don't mind using other people's toilets or finding some other solution), or more often, in plastic trash bags. The recipe is simple: make a strong bag by double or triple-bagging some plastic trash bags and knotting the bottoms. Into this, pour warm water, some fruit or fruit juice, raisins or tomatoes, yeast, and as much sugar as you can get ahold of (or powdered drink mix). Now tie off the top of the bag, letting a tube of some kind protrude so the thing won't explode while it gives off carbon dioxide. Now hide the bag somewhere and wait at least three days. A week is enough.

One of the problems you have right away with making wine in prison is the difficulty getting yeast. It's a strictly forbidden item and you might not be able to get any. In this case you can improvise the by using slices of bread, preferably moldy (but not dry) and preferably inside a sock for easier straining.

If you choose to brew your wine in your cell, you'll need to hide it behind your bunk and do what you can to hide the smell. Burning cinnamon as incense is one way. Spraying deodorant around is another. Normal wine takes at least a month if not six weeks to make at all properly -- but in hell, this is all you get."

Like I said, apparently it's not as awful to drink as you might think. I know this second hand, given my previously mentioned aversion to bad-tasting stuff, but this guy has no such aversion, and he does it for me. Thank God for that!

SHANKS V. SHIVS
Apparently our federal attorneys have discussed at length whether shivs and shanks are the same thing. Wikipedia even covers it. I always assumed that "shiv" was Yiddish. It is not. It's Romani (what we used to call gypsies; I guess they need shivs even more than us Jews.) Shiv is a generic noun covering sharp objects. A shank refers specifically to the steel used to stiffen work boots, but the word is used more broadly today. It is also the verb. You can shank someone with a shiv. You can shank someone with a shank. You cannot shiv someone with anything. Like the prison wine, people are pretty inventive in their desire to create weapons "inside." I don't know if I'd go so far as to call them artistic or pretty, although these guys would, and they know more about design than me.

FUN FACT
The United States has more people incarcerated than any nation on earth, including China, which has four times the population.

MURDER ONE
I didn't do as well in Criminal Procedure as I would have liked, but if I remember one thing, it's to keep your freakin' mouth shut when the cops are talking to you. Because, like the Man said, "anything you say can be used against you..," even if it has nothing to do with what the cops are talking to you about. Seriously, shut up. Don't even make eye contact if you can help it. Here's an interesting take on it as a running monolog from the book "Homicide." At some point in the show they filmed it, but any if anyone can find it on YouTube (this sequence, not bits of the show) I promise I'll give you full credit (and we know how much that's worth.)

You are a citizen of a free nation, having lived your life in a land of guaranteed civil liberties, and you commit a crime of violence, whereupon you are jacked up, hauled down to a police station and deposited in a claustrophobic anteroom with three chairs, a table and no windows. There you sit for a half hour or so until a police detective—a man you have never met before, a man who can in no way be mistaken for a friend—enters the room with a thin stack of lined notepaper and a ball-point pen.

The detective offers a cigarette, not your brand, and begins an uninterrupted monologue that wanders back and forth for a half hour more, eventually coming to rest in a familiar place: “You have the right to remain silent.”

Of course you do. You’re a criminal. Criminals always have the right to remain silent. At least once in your miserable life, you spent an hour in front of a television set, listening to this book-‘em-Danno routine. You think Joe Friday was lying to you? You think Kojak was making this horseshit up? No way, bunk, we’re talking sacred freedoms here, notably your Fifth Fucking Amendment protection against self-incrimination, and hey, it was good enough for Ollie North, so who are you to go incriminating yourself at the first opportunity? Get it straight: A police detective, a man who gets paid government money to put you in prison, is explaining your absolute right to shut up before you say something stupid.

“Anything you say or write may be used against you in a court of law.”

Yo, bunky, wake the fuck up. You’re being told that talking to a police detective in an interrogation room can only hurt you. If it could help you, they would probably be pretty quick to say that, wouldn’t they? They’d stand up and say you have the right not to worry because what you say or write in this godforsaken cubicle is gonna be used to your benefit in a court of law. No, your best bet is to shut up. Shut up now.

“You have the right to talk to a lawyer at any time—before any questioning, before answering any questions, or during any questions.”

Talk about helpful. Now the man who wants to arrest you for violating the peace and dignity of the state is saying you can talk to a trained professional, an attorney who has read the relevant portions of the Maryland Annotated Code or can at least get his hands on some Cliff’s Notes. And let’s face it, pal, you just carved up a drunk in a Dundalk Avenue bar, but that don’t make you a neurosurgeon. Take whatever you can get.

“If you want a lawyer and cannot afford to hire one, you will not be asked any questions, and the court will be requested to appoint a lawyer for you.

Translation: You’re a derelict. No charge for derelicts.

At this point, if all lobes are working, you ought to have seen enough of this Double Jeopardy category to know that it ain’t where you want to be. How a little something from Criminal Lawyers and Their Clients for $50, Alex?

Whoa, bunk, not so fast.

“Before we get started, lemme just get through this paperwork,” says the detective, who now produces an Explanation of Rights sheet, BPD Form 69, and passes it across the table.

“EXPLANATION OF RIGHTS,” declares the top line in bold black letters. The detective asks you to fill in your name, address, age, and education, then the date and time. That much accomplished, he asks you to read the next section.

“YOU ARE HEREBY ADVISED THAT:”

Read number one, the detective says. Do you understand number one?

“You have the absolute right to remain silent.”

Yeah, you understand. We did this already.

“Then write your initials next to number one. Now read number two.”

And so forth, until you have initialed each component of the Miranda warning. That done, the detective tells you to write your signature on the next line, the one just below the sentence that says, “I HAVE READ THE ABOVE EXPLANATION OF MY RIGHTS AND FULLY UNDERSTAND IT.”

You sign your name and the monologue resumes. The detective assures you that he has informed you of these rights because he wants you to be protected, because there is nothing that concerns him more than giving you every possible assistance in this very confusing and stressful moment in your life. If you don’t want to talk, he tells you, that’s fine, too, because first of all, he’s no relation to the guy you cut up, and second, he’s gonna get six hours overtime no matter what you do. But he wants you to know—and he’s been doing this a lot longer than you, so take his word for it—that your rights to remain silent and obtain qualified counsel aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.

Look at it this way, he says, leaning back in his chair. Once you up and call for a lawyer, son, we can’t do a damn thing for you. No sir, your friends in the city homicide unit are going to have to leave you locked in this room all alone and the next authority figure to scan your case will be a tie-wearing, three-piece bloodsucker—a no-nonsense prosecutor from the Violent Crimes Unit with the official title of assistant state’s attorney for the city of Baltimore. And God help you then, son, because a ruthless fucker like that will have an O’Donnell Heights motorhead like yourself halfway to the gas chamber before you get three words out. Now’s the time to speak out, right now when I got my pen and paper here on the table, because once I walk out of this room any chance you have of telling your side of the story is gone and I gotta write it up the way it looks. And the way it looks right now is first-fucking-degree murder. Felony murder, mister, which when shoved up a man’s asshole is a hell of a lot more painful than second-degree or maybe even manslaughter. What you say right here and now could make the difference, bunk. Did I mention that Maryland has a gas chamber? Big, ugly sumbitch at the penitentiary on Eager Street, not twenty blocks from here. You don’t wanna get too close to that bad boy, lemme tell you.

A small, wavering sound of protest passes your lips and the detective leans back in his chair, shaking his head sadly.

What the hell is wrong with you, son? You think I’m fucking with you? Hey, I don’t even need to bother with your weak shit. I got three witnesses in three other rooms who say you’re my man. I got a knife from the scene that’s going downstairs to the lab for latent prints. I got blood spatter on them Air Jordans we took off you ten minutes ago. Why the fuck do you think we took ‘em? Do I look like I wear high-top tennies? Fuck no. You got spatter all over ‘em, and I think we both know whose blood type it’s gonna be. Hey, bunk, I’m only in here to make sure that there ain’t nothing you can say for yourself before I write it up.

You hesitate.

Oh, says the detective. You want to think about it. Hey, think about it all you want, pal. My captains’s right outside in the hallway, and he already told me to charge your ass in the first fuckin’ degree. For once in your beshitted little life someone is giving you a chance and you’re too fucking dumb to take it. What the fuck, you go ahead and think about it and I’ll tell my captain to cool his heels for ten minutes. I can do that much for you. How ‘bout some coffee? Another cigarette?

The detective leaves you alone in the cramped, windowless room. Just you and the blank notepaper and the Form 69 and…first-degree murder. First-degree murder with witnesses and fingerprints and blood on your Air Jordans. Christ, you didn’t even notice the blood on your own fucking shoes. Felony murder, mister. First-fucking-degree. How many years, you begin to wonder, how many years do I get for involuntary manslaughter?

Whereupon the man who wants to put you in prison, the man who is not your friend, comes back in the room, asking if the coffee’s okay.

Yeah, you say, the coffee’s fine, but what happens if I want a lawyer?

The detective shrugs. Then we get a lawyer, he says. And I walk out of the room and type up the charging documents for first-degree murder and you can’t say a fucking thing about it. Look, bunk, I’m giving you a chance. He came at you, right? You were scared. It was self-defense.

Your mouth opens to speak.

He came at you, didn’t he?

“Yeah,” you venture cautiously, “he came at me.”

Whoa, says the detective, holding up his hands. Wait a minute. If we’re gonna do this, I gotta find your rights form. Where’s the fucking form? Damn things are like cops, never around when you need ‘em. Here it is, he says, pushing the explanation-of-rights sheet across the table and pointing to the bottom. Read that, he says.

“I am willing to answer questions and I do not want any attorney at this time. My decision to answer questions with having an attorney present is free and voluntary on my part.”

As you read, he leaves the room and returns a moment later with a second detective as a witness. You sign the bottom of the form, as do both detectives.

The first detective looks up from the form, his eyes soaked with innocence. “He came at you, huh?”

“Yeah, he came at me.”

Get used to small rooms, bunk, because you are about to be drop-kicked into the lost land of pretrial detention. Because it’s one thing to be a murdering little asshole from Southeast Baltimore, and it’s another thing to be stupid about it, and with five little words you have just elevated yourself to the ranks of the truly witless.

End of the road, pal. It’s over. It’s history. And if that police detective wasn’t so busy committing your weak bullshit to paper, he’d probably look you in the eye and tell you so. He'd give you another cigarette and say, son, you are ignorance personified and you just put yourself in for the fatal stabbing of a human being. He might even tell you that the other witnesses in the other rooms are too drunk to identify their own reflections, much less the kid who had the knife, or that it’s always a long shot for the lab to pull a latent off a knife hilt, or that your $95 sneakers are as clean as the day you bought them. If he was feeling particularly expansive, he might tell you that everyone who leaves the homicide unit in handcuffs does so charged with first-degree murder, that it’s for the lawyers to decide what kind of deal will be cut. He might even go on to say that even after all these years working homicides, there is still a small part of him that finds it completely mystifying that anyone ever utters a single word in a police interrogation. To illustrate this point, he could hold up your Form 69, on which you waived away every last one of your rights, and say, “Lookit here, pistonhead, I told you twice that you were deep in the shit and what whatever you said could put you in deeper.” And if his message was still somehow beyond your understanding, he could drag you carcass back down to the sixth-floor hallway, back toward the sign that says Homicide Unit in white block letters, the sign you saw when you walked off the elevator.

Now think hard: Who lives in a homicide unit? Yeah, right. And what do homicide detectives do for a living? Yeah, you got it, bunk. And what did you do tonight? You murdered someone.

So when you opened that mouth of yours, what the fuck were you thinking?

RIGHT TO SILENCE IN THE UK
For my faithful UK readers, none of the above applies. The Fifth Amendment in the US allows us to say nothing, and then add facts later, without an assumption that our silence implied we had nothing to say (or something like that.) In the United Kingdom, however, juries are allowed to infer that silence followed by esculpatory facts means that the criminal made up the facts. I explained all of that quite poorly. If you get arrested in the UK, ask for an attorney as soon as possible, and list every possible alibi as soon as you can.

Gnarls Barkley..!

A few interesting factoids about musical group Gnarls Barkley.

Their most famous song, Crazy, is based on a bass line from a spaghetti western theme called (the song, not the movie) Nel Cimitero di Tucson, which means, as you might expect, In the Tuscon Cemetery. It's a pretty sweet line, it's amazing no one sampled it before 2006. The movie was called Preparati la Bara! which means (You) Prepare a Coffin!

It turns out that Crazy is one of the most covered songs of the decade, even if it was overplayed at frat parties from coast to coast. Personally, I think it's a great song. It tied "Bohemian Rhapsody" for most consecutive weeks as #1 in the UK, but they pulled the song before people "got sick of it."

Gnarls Barkley, like Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull before them, is not a single person. In fact, they say they aren't really called Gnarls Barkley most of the time. That's just the name they record under. Whenever they play live, they give themselves a new name, and/or costumes that match to a theme. To wit:

• Chocolate John and the M.D.'s, dressed as doctors and nurses.
• John Nash and the Beautiful Minds, dressed as scientists, opened with "She Blinded Me with Science"
• Mean Ol' Lion and the Hearts, with a Wizard of Oz theme. They opened with "Breathe" by Pink Floyd
• Area 69, dressed as astronauts, played "Space Oddity"
• The Sam Cookes, dressed as chefs, opened with "Hungry Like the Wolf" by Duran Duran
• Love 40, dressed in tennis whites
• School of Rock, dressed as private school girls and boys, played "Another Brick in the Wall"
• The Chariots of Fire, dressed as gladiators, played "We are the Champions"

• Dressed as pilots

The list continues, as you might imagine. Also, they seem to insist on doing publicity shoots in a similar way:
Hunter S. Thompson and attorney Dr. Gonzo

















Wayne and Garth


















Neo and Morpheus
















Napoleon Dynamite and Pedro

















There are more examples, but, frankly, I tire of the chase.

Geysers

Geysers. T. Scott Bryan knows from geysers. Honestly, I have no idea what his qualifications are, but if you look for information online about geysers, his name will pop up. So to speak. I'll have more on Mr. Bryan in a bit.

First, what is a geyser? Geysers are hot springs, all named after a specific hot spring called Geysir, in Iceland, which I wish meant "geyser" in Icelandic, but apparently means "erupter" or "gusher." Technically, they don't have to be hot, but also none of that for now.

Geysers are hot springs that discharge great amount of water intermittently or periodically. The level of the eruption doesn't seem to matter--some are as little as a foot high--but the periodic nature seems to be. Oddly, the literature dismissively refers to hot springs that constantly spew forth great amounts of water as "'just' perpetual spouters." Like doing shooting water into the air 24/7 is easy; what's hard is stopping. Perpetual spouters suffer from their great consistency. But if they stop every once in a while, they're geysers, and suddenly everyone thinks they're cool. There are numerous geyser gazing websites, but no perpetual spouter sites. But enough about them, apparently they aren't worth our time. They don't even have their own Wikipedia page.

Anyway, there are about 1,000 geysers worldwide. (Also, in another show of geological exclusivity, the number varies not just because of human intervention and geologic variation over time, it also varies because one geyser gazing club or another will decide a weak geyser is merely a "vigorous hot spring.") More than half of that number are in Yellowstone National Park, with perhaps 20% of the world total in just the Upper Geyser Basin.

The number of geysers in Yellowstone as a worldwide percentage is actually increasing. Iceland and New Zealand, whatever the remainder of their environmental legacy, have been destroying their geysers at a phenomenal rate.

Geyser "Records"

• Tallest Active: Steamboat
• Largest Predictable: Grand
• (Side note: What is "large"?). Plus it features the sentence "It depends on what your definitions of "large" and "is" are," which is a beautiful concept.
• Most Faithful: Old Faithful (there seems to be some disagreement how to monkey with the definition to ensure that Old Faithful is the most whatever it is)
• Oldest Geyser: Castle
• Largest Geyser Destroyed by Humans: Manguini. The New Zealanders destroyed 50-75 geysers in two weeks filling up a lake as overflow for a geothermal plant. Kudos! They've destroyed or partially destroyed two other geyser basins.
• Tallest Ever: Waimangu (it erupted for a few years until a landslide took it out. Makes the kiwis feel better about having killed the majority of their geysers all on their own)
  

Cold Geysers
There are a number of cold-water geysers in the world. Most are driven by carbon dioxide pressure instead of steam created by heat. The biggest that I know of is Crystal Geyser, near Green River, Utah.

Geyser Safety
Needless to say, pulling a yogi bear and sitting on a geyser is a bad idea. Getting close to one is actually a bad idea. They have those barriers and walkways in Yellowstone not just to keep you off the fragile biosphere, but also to keep you fat americans from falling into the ground or from getting superheated sulfuric acid splashed on your face. Don't believe me? So there. Lee Whittlesey has a few things to say about that. OK, some of the people got eaten by bears and run over by bison.

T. Scott Bryan
Literally wrote the book on geysers in Yellowstone. You know what it's called? Geysers in Yellowstone. It's 463 pages of pure obsessive coverage of what is apparently his favorite topic. To be fair, he has an appendix of all the other major (and some minor) geyser basins in the world. But, basically, this is 400+ pages of lovingly detailed descriptions of geyser locations, their appearance before, during, and after an eruption, how to predict an eruption, as well as their frequency and length, what it sounds like, what their cone looks like, any relationships with other geysers (geysers are extremely incestuous), water tempuratures, and who discovered them.

He's been married through all four printings of the book to a woman whom I assume is a saint.

Also, as a very minor bit of tangential trivia, the book was originally categorized under "natural disasters."

The book, as you've no doubt gathered, is quite detailed. He even goes through the effort of creating a nomenclature system for unnamed geysers. For example, the first unnamed geyser in the Upper Geyser Basin is UNNG-UG1. Of course, since he doesn't create a system for referring to named geysers, he could probably drop the whole "UNNG" thing. Someone needs to send him a copy of Edward Tufte's books on data-ink: "Graphical excellence is that which gives the viewer the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time with the least ink in the smallest space...Every drop of ink should be there to show the data." But I digress, and have fodder for another article...

In any case, it's pretty amazing stuff. Of course, he continues the "just a perpetual spouter" line of thinking. Strangely, however, some hot springs that have erupted once ever technically meet the definition of being periodic or intermittent and therefore are included. Go figure. Like, once in 1959. At night. The only evidence is that the ground was extra wet. Boom! (so to speak) it gets in the geyser book.

In some ways, this guy is my hero, although hero in the opposite way of what I do... he finds a subject and really writes the shit out of for about 30 years. And his research indicates he's seen some pretty obscure stuff and spent a lot of time sitting around waiting for Little Whirligig Geyser to treat him to its very special every few hours 5-foot spew of hot water... I wonder if he diversifies at all? He could probably do some really great work on monkeys!

Maybe I should explain how a geyser works?

Stealing thoughts of others...

(with attribution).

from Matthew Yglesias:

Mark Helprin's gone and done us all the service of advocating the idea that dare not speak its name: Rather than endlessly retroactively extending copyrights, why not make them last forever?

Unfortunately, he doesn't consider any of the various reasons that make this a terrible idea. Is it, for example, really such a bad thing that community theaters and schools all throughout the country (and, indeed, the world) can put on productions of Shakespeare's plays without paying stiff licensing fees? What if his heir and his team of consultants (I recommend Marsh) determined that the profit-maximizing license fee was really, really high -- something only the world's major theaters could afford, and something that they'd be willing to pay since his work is, to say the least, kind of well regarded.

Alternatively, one can imagine a world in which Herman Melville's great-great grandson decides to release a "director's cut" version of Moby Dick and then embark on a campaign, à la George Lucas, to prevent the publication of the original version of the novel. He couldn't, of course, suppress the already existing print copies of the story which might continue to circulate, samizdat-style, for decades, but I still think there might be a problem. Melville fans and literary critics around the world would eagerly await Great-great-grandson Melville's demise and hope that his heir might be more reasonable.

You also already have an enormous problem of orphaned works, situations where nobody knows who owns the copyright to something, and where the person who owns the copyright may not even realize that the work exists. Obviously, the longer copyrights endure the worse this problem gets. Forever, meanwhile, is an extraordinarily long time -- we'd be drowning in orphaned works.

This last point is, in many ways, the crux of the matter. It would suck if my grandfather's novels -- or my grandmother's, or my dad's -- were to become orphaned in the future, or just unavailable because ownership of them passed into the hands of some jerk who didn't care about them. My grandparents are all people I know personally (or knew in the case of my late grandfather), but I couldn't so much as name all my great-grandparents.

Expecting Nth degree heirs to manage the oversight of cultural works properly is irresponsible. When things enter the public domain, by contrast, the practical impact is to put the fate of the work in the hands of whoever happens to know of and care about its existence. That, in turn, is a much healthier situation for world culture -- Shakespeare's works are whatever Shakespeare lovers make of them, which is how it should be.

Had that on my computer, and now I don't have to anymore!

How strong are chimpanzees?

To start with, we will be examining this subject at some length, including applications, research, formal and anecdotal studies, and drunken tales. This being the Internet Age, much research will also be conducted using other people's bogus research and man vs. monkey fantasies.

How strong is an actual chimpanzee? Yeah, they're strong. Before that can be answered, we have to figure out, you know, how the hell do you figure out how strong they are??? They won't do benchpresses, much less a clean and jerk. So let's explore these mysteries before we move onto the advanced topics of simian snowboarding and MMA/Chimp cage matches and even Orangutan/Sumo tug of war.

First, primary scientific research is hard to find. Most citations in the modern press boil down to two references, neither very rigorous: The Straight Dope, and GoogleAnswers. An article was written in 1943 called The Bodily Strength of Chimpanzees and seemed to be pay dirt, until they wanted me to pay $19 just to see the synopsis. Clearly, there was nothing of value there. The only other source I could find was a "study" done in the Bronx Zoo in the 20's, using some kind of contraption like a lat bar to measure how strong the various chimps were.

They can explain:

"In the test, a 165 pound male chimp pulled, with one arm, 847 pounds. And this isn't even necessarily the limit of its strength - it's just when the chimp got bored of pulling. Also - get a load of this - in the same study, a 135 pound female chimp pulled 1,260 pounds. With one arm!"

So there you have it, case closed, because clearly it's all settled. Or not:

'I couldn't find much on the physical limits of the human body (like "how strong does a chimp have to be to pull my arms off?") but there are some similar cases, which we might use for analogy...'

SNOWBOARDING MONKEYS
I couldn't possibly provide a better overall description than (Mr.(?)) Louie's story here: http://www.endlesslope.com/louie.htm.
But the upshot is that monkeys, or, more specifically, apes, can snowboard. I've been saying that for years on some of these more teenage-friendly slopes, but no bother. This is for "real."
Some items of interest from the tale:

• Chimps have "beedy eyes"
• Chimps have an "aversion" to snow
• The ski lift resulted in jumping and "panic hysteria." Yeah, really.
• They invented the first slip-in snowboard boot "if more chimpanzees take up snowboarding"!

They dubbed him "THE XTREME PRIMATE" (Caps and spelling theirs)

ULTIMATE MIXED SPECIES MARTIAL ARTS FIGHTING
Perhaps not shockingly, from a culture that still wonders "Could my dad beat up Bruce Lee?" (answer, by the way, depending on whether Mr. Lee could fight back from beyond the grave), it shouldn't be a surprise the various mouth-breathers wonder not just whether their favorite fighter could take on some random ape, but also what martial arts style would be most appropriate for kicking bonobo ass. Let's explore. Scratch that. Let's sum up:

Orangutan vs Chimp in MMA ***FANTASY*** wonders... well, I think that sums up pretty well what they're wondering. If you had fantasies about noble, intellingent, threatened animals forced to fight for your pleasure, who would rip who to shreads first. Money quote:

"Orangutans would have the size and strength but a chimp is the fighting ape from hell."

There is a great deal of discussion (at link above) about various aspects of chimpanzee and orangutan physiology and what the posters' opinions about their fighting styles might be.  There general feeling is that the winner would then be crushed by the gorilla in the real championship fight, although there is a vocal minority who believed that the winner would have to prove itself against a baboon first. However, I believe that this video shows this theory is weak at best. For those who don't want to bother watching it, a female chimpanzee fights off a male baboon... most of the time she's carrying her baby while she's doing it. (Also, no one gets hurt in the video, but there is a little violence. 

SWIMMING

One of the theories about why apes are so much stronger than humans is that their bones are denser than ours; thereby making them weak (and reluctant) swimmers. In fact, some have wrongly claimed that humans are the only primate that swims. This "fact" can be used as "proof" that humans are not in fact descended from apes. For example: Here. And that's a scientific argument. Others simply argue that just because humans swim doesn't mean that we descended from other swimming creatures. In any case, there is plenty of proof that other primates swim. This video provides anecdotal proof in the form of extremely cute monkeys swimming with Yello's 80's classic "Oh Yeah" inexplicably as the soundtrack.

This post about gorillas swimming needn't be read (I read it for you), but it does contain an interesting tidbit about the scientific method: "As far as I know, no one has ever thrown a gorilla into the water and watched what happened..." 

Speaking of the scientific method, here's someone using the existence of the scientific argument to argue for creationism, or at least that because the "aquatic ape theory" is so blatantly wrong, creationism must be right by some kind of christian transitive property. He actually says "Evolutionism is a cancer on rational thought;" which itself is an argument so ludicrous it makes my brain hurt, but whatever.

Here's a picture of an orangutan swimming. Apparently, they swim all the time; in fact, it seems to be such common knowledge that they swim that the whole thing about humans, primates, and swimming seems silly, since, you know, we don't have to look very hard to find an example. Maybe we're the only primates that like to swim. Heck, I don't like swimming that much. Maybe that's some kind of proof for creationism, too.

TUG OF WAR

Here's a video of an orang doing a tug of war with a sumo. The first time I watched it, I thought it was awesome. Now I think it looks fake. Look at how the sumo dives into the water. But it's still cool and likely an indication of what might happen, if that sort of thing happened outside of reality tv shows.

It's been fun, but I think I'm putting this puppy to bed.